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Never had Conniston known a busier forenoon, never
a happier. The fatigue, the despondency, the
utter hopelessness of the early morning was swept
away. He felt a new life course through his veins,
there came a fresh elasticity to his stride, his voice
rang with confidence. For he was as a leader
of a lost hope within the walls of a beleaguered city
to whom, when all hope was gone, reinforcements had
come.

He felt that now nothing could tire him in body or
in mind, nothing drive from his heart his glorious
conviction of success to come.

And yet he had no faintest idea how busy the day was
to be. When two hours had passed and the wagons
carrying three hundred men had started for the Valley,
Conniston had the two hundred and fifty men at Deep
Creek working with a swiftness, an effectiveness which
would have told a chance observer that they had been
familiar many days with the work. He was to leave
them before noon, to hurry on horseback to overtake
the wagons that he might personally oversee the arrangements
to be made upon their coming into the Valley.
And there was much to be done, many specific orders
to give the Lark, before he dared leave.

Upon the dam itself he put a hundred men to work.
The remaining hundred and fifty he set to building
the great flume which was to carry the stored water
for five hundred yards along the ridge, then into
the cut in the crest of the ridge and into Dam Number
Two. He saw that he must have more horses, more
plows and scrapers. But for the present he could
do without them. There was blasting to be done
upon the rugged wall of the canon, there were tall
pines bunched in groves, many of which must come down
before the flume could be completed or the ditch made.
And men with axes and crowbars and giant powder were
set to their tasks.

Everywhere he went the Lark dogged his heels, listening
intently to the orders which his superior gave him.

“The main thing,” Conniston told him,
when he had outlined the work as well as he could,
“is to keep your men working! Don’t
lose any time. I’ll be back as soon as
I can make it, some time to-morrow, and if you don’t
know how to handle anything that comes up put your
men on something else. The dam has got to be
made, the flume has got to be built, the cut has to
be dug, a lot of trees and boulders have to come out.
You will have enough to keep you busy.”

“Do you know, Mr. Conniston,” Jimmie Kent
told him, as they sat down together for a bite of
lunch, “I’ve got a hunch. A rare,
golden hunch!”

Conniston laughed—­he was in the mood to
laugh at anything now—­and asked what the
rare “hunch” was.

“Just this: there’s going to be some
fun pulled off in this very same neck of the woods
before the first of October! And, by Harry, I’d
like to see it! Have you any objection to my
sort of roosting around and keeping my bright eye
on the game? Oh, I don’t want a salary;
I’ll pay for my grub, and you can have my valuable
advice gratis. Can I stick around?”